It doesn't take long to spot an empty shop front, or several of the area's growing number of elderly people.

Now Jan-Niklas, who sees reunification as a "success story" overall, is on a mission to bring younger people and families back.

It's "home", he says. "I like the people. I think they deserve [to do] well."

He left when he was in his late teens, to later return having built a career as a recruiter for a major German bank. His move home made the local news.

"Back in Oschersleben after 13 years," read the Volksstimme (People's Voice) headline. "Returnee calls for ways to combat the skilled-worker shortage."

That's just one problem with population decline; filling vacant jobs, including crucial social and healthcare roles to support the increasingly elderly population.

Fewer people can also lead to fewer services, such as shops, maternity wards, and schools.

While a large number of migrants or refugees have come to Germany from countries including Ukraine, Syria and Turkey – as well as from other EU nations – those immigrants have mainly headed to big cities, such as Berlin, and the more urbanised west.

And even when accounting for these people, Germany has an ageing population as the baby-boomer generation increasingly retires, and the nationwide birth rate stays stubbornly low.

It means a shrinking workforce is having to shoulder the cost of a growing number of retirees.

Birth rates began falling in the late sixties, after the introduction of the contraceptive pill and at a time when women became more likely to enter the workforce. But last year the number of births reached their lowest level since 1946, according to preliminary figures.

Professor Martin Bujard, from the Federal Institute for Population Research, a government agency, says data suggests that the impact of global crises like covid and the war in Ukraine have exacerbated the trend.

"After Russia launched its full-scale invasion, nine or ten months later, birth rates in Germany fell," says Professor Bujard.

The latest figures show that women without German nationality have more children than German citizens, with rates of 1.84 and 1.23 respectively (known as the fertility rate).

But both are below the "replacement rate" of 2.1; the level at which a population stays steady from one generation to the next.

Germany's not alone in this. The UN has warned of an "unprecedented decline" in global fertility rates, driven by factors such as affordability and a lack of suitable housing.

What's unique about the east of Germany today is that these birth rates are happening within a population that was so recently – and so rapidly – hollowed out.

There have been many initiatives over many years to increase the population in the east of Germany.

Katy Löwe runs one of them from Halberstadt, a town that lies at the northern foothills of Saxony-Anhalt's Harz Mountains, 120 miles west of Berlin.

We met in Cathedral Square, near the Gothic-style St. Martini church which was destroyed at the end of World War Two and then rebuilt.

It's one of the attractions for passing tourists, but Katy's mission is to get people to actually live in the region.

Funded by local firms who need workers, Heimvorteil Harz (which translates as Home Advantage Harz), tries to match people with vacancies and promote the area's perks.

Driving through the region, you'll find well maintained roads and picturesque towns.

Standards of living in the east have significantly improved since reunification, even if wages still lag behind the west, particularly when compared to wealthy states like Bavaria.

For Katy, who's from a nearby village, bringing people back is personal: "I think the main thing is the fear that towns will be half empty. Villages will be half empty."

"That's what we have to reverse in order to maintain a good quality of life in rural areas."

Heimvorteil Harz doesn't have precise records of how many people they've lured back and campaigns like hers, Katy says, can only go so far. "The problem is too big."

It may be where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party forms its first state-level government.

This would be an explosive moment in a country where the far-right hasn't held that kind of power since World War Two, although AfD leaders strongly reject comparisons to Nazism and insist they are a conservative, libertarian movement.

The social-media savvy Ulrich Siegmund is the AfD's lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, where the party is polling at more than 40% ahead of elections in September. This could be enough for an overall majority.

Population decline may be among the reasons behind the AfD's popularity.

According to sociologist Katja Salomo, "Research shows that electoral support for far-right parties, including the AfD, tends to be higher in the regions most affected by population decline."

While it's difficult to prove precise links, she says - for example- a sense of stagnation and dwindling infrastructure can make communities feel that the political system, "is not working for people like them."

Such areas can also have a more "sceptical view of immigration" even though more immigration would, in principle, "help to stabilise East Germany's demographic situation."

In 2023, domestic intelligence found that the AfD's Saxony-Anhalt branch was permeated by a "racist ideology" in violation of the German constitution which guarantees "human dignity" for all.

As a result, it's one of the states in which the party's been classed as right-wing extremist. It generally rejects such designations as politicised persecution.

In its manifesto, the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt argues that immigration is an, "Unsuitable remedy for the extinction of the local population."

Instead, it wants to incentivise larger families by, for example, handing out baby bonus payments to parents.

Critics say the AfD's wider anti-immigration and deportation plans would be both a disaster for Germany's already ailing economy and potentially illegal. But many Germans see it differently.

According to surveys, the AfD is now the country's most popular party with polling numbers in the high twenties, although its support remains heavily skewed to the east.